Best Banana Pudding Ever (Summer 2022 Dessert)

Grandma’s Banana Pudding Recipe

What Makes this Recipe Special?

This recipe is our founders’ grandmother’s recipe for banana pudding. It was a dessert that she made for him for any special occasion, and he always loved it! To this day, it is still a staple at family get-togethers and has not lost its charm at all. This banana pudding recipe would be a great dessert to bring to a summer get together, for a quick treat or just for the heck of it. In fact, we plan to use it to celebrate Father’s Day. It comes together super quick and there really isn’t much variation in flavor from batch to batch, so it is super consistent as well! It is currently 2022 and this recipe has been a favorite for as long as we can remember.

What Makes a Good Banana Pudding?

In our opinion, there are 2 main parts to a good banana pudding recipe: flavor and texture. This recipe in particular nails both of those things. The recipe utilizes rich ingredients like sweetened condensed milk (Eagle Brand is what grandma prefers!), Cool-Whip, whole milk, vanilla extract, French vanilla pudding mix and Nilla Wafers (can use off brand wafers if desired). Sure, you could make all of these things from scratch, but why would you when the recipe turns out this good? Plus, using ripe bananas gives this pudding the perfect flavor and adds to the creamy texture this banana pudding is supposed to have. Non-ripe bananas may be used, it just isn’t quite as good in our opinion!

The flavor of this pudding is very rich.  Maybe for a banana pudding, you would expect more banana ingredients, but trust us when we say that all of these ingredients work together in the best possible way and this recipe is always a hit anywhere we take it. In fact, we can’t even remember a time when we had leftovers to bring back!

As far as texture goes, it should be a slightly lighter pudding due to the Cool-Whip, plus some crunch from the cookies (we like ours a little soggy) and creamy from the bananas.

Key Ingredients

The ingredients that really can’t be altered without sacrificing flavor are the ripe bananas and French vanilla pudding mix. Off brand cookies or other ingredients will work fine from our experience, but these two things seem to make the biggest difference in how the banana pudding turns out. Another essential step is folding in the Cool Whip instead of just mixing it. If you mix the Cool-Whip into the pudding, it will deflate and the texture will be off. The banana pudding will still be good, but taking the time to fold it in is well worth it in our opinion.

Making the Pudding

There really isn’t too much you have to do to make this pudding come together. It is essentially combining the pudding mix, milk, vanilla and condensed milk and then folding in the cool-whip so not to deflate it. Then it is layering cookies, pudding bananas, pudding, repeat  in a serving bowl until all of the pudding is used up. This is a recipe that can be paired with just about any food, but we love to have it in the warmer months. Our ideal BBQ would consist of this banana pudding, spare ribs, chicken wings, potato salad (recipe coming soon), baked beans (recipe coming soon), coleslaw and sweet tea!

Pro Tip: let this pudding chill for a few hours in the fridge before serving.